A Good Reason To Hate Mother-In-Laws

Even though I have one more review waiting in the wings, so to speak, I decided to watch a horror short. Things are still busy around here. To add to that, I started up my interview with Terry (Cattleworks) again, and started a new one. Not saying who yet, that would be telling. I've never been one to kiss and tell after all. If you have been reading any of the recent comments on a somewhat recent review at Top Horror Movies Club, then you will have a pretty good idea who it is. Anyway, I have gotten a couple of emails from director Erik L. Wilson asking if I would review his short film House Call (2011). Since it was only 17 minutes long, shorter without the credits, I not only watched it, I watched it twice!

Janice (Aimee Bello) is a married woman with a boyfriend. As the movie opens we hear Janice talking with her boyfriend Steve (Michael Jordan) about how her husband knocker her out and that his mother (Janet Gawrys) was said to have been been practicing black magic. Steve encourages her to find a way to get away from Dave (Brad Egger). Once home, Dave is in the bath yelling at Janice about being with her boyfriend again, even though she denies it, and swears he will beat her once he gets out. This causes Janice to do something that will let her be with Steve. Four months later, we see that Janice is in fact living with Steve now as they celebrate their one year anniversary. But Mother has some plans for them.

House Call was filmed using a Red One digital camera. I couldn't tell you if this is a good or bad thing when it comes to cameras, but I can say that House Call does have a very crisp look to it. The plot itself I didn't think would be anything all that interesting, but I wasn't expecting what the mother ended up doing. Something I noticed at the start of the movie was the lighting. It looked stretched if that makes any sense. I assume this was some type of digital effect since it was only there for the first couple of scenes. Some people seemed to think that the lighting was a little on the dark side, but I didn't have any issues with that. House Call starts off a tad slow, but quickly picks up the pace once mother shows up. One of the things that made this short enjoyable for me was the sound effects that was used along with the music. It made things much more interesting.

The special effects are a mix of CGI and practical effects. The CGI effects are kept down, but they were very well done. I really liked what was done the first time we see them with the smoke. Even the makeup effects were well done. They aren't real gross, but I think they will be a nice surprise for most horror fans. The acting was also well done. I don't know why, but I didn't care for Aimee Bello a lot. Not saying she did a bad job, just was something about it that I didn't care for much. I also didn't care much for Michael Jordan at first, but thought he was much better in the later half of the film.

So far House Call can only be seen by invitation only. It is on a password protected site. Wilson is hoping to get House Call into the horror convention and film festival scenes. I don't think he will have a problem at all getting that done. If you happen to have a blog, I do hope you get invited to watch House Call. It is a fun movie, and even if you find you don't like it for some reason, as least you don't have to invest a lot of time to it.
4 out of 5 Makes me glad I have yet to get married